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Ask HN: Node.js vs. Go – which tech stack has higher freelance demand?

3 points by ntide ↗ HN
I'm looking to start freelancing as a full-stack web developer, but before going out to find leads I want to get to know a particular tech stack very well. On the front-end side of things, I hear Angular is in very high demand, and React is also worth looking into. However, I'm more conflicted over choice of back-end tech. It seems like there's plenty of demand for node.js skills, but at the same time I know that lots of node.js devs are moving to Go because of node's debugging/performance shortcomings. And is there any demand for Go freelancers? The job market for Go seems much smaller.

Should I learn both as part of my freelance offerings?

As far as other back-end options go, I could maybe learn some Rails or some PHP CMS, but I'd much rather focus on JavaScript. I've done some Android/mobile work before and it isn't that interesting to me for now, even if there's money in it.

8 comments

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SQL2219
Winner is Go by a large margin. 6.5X more demand

http://jobdensity.com/QueryGrid.aspx?q=906&t=node.js&qt=6/27...

http://www.jobdensity.com/QueryGrid.aspx?q=907&t=go&qt=6/27/...

ntide
Interesting...but could it be that Go is a super generic term? It's surprising that Go has more jobs than Python, for example:

http://www.jobdensity.com/QueryGrid.aspx?q=912&t=Python&qt=6...

SQL2219
yea, thought of that. so now Go by 2.4X

http://www.jobdensity.com/QueryGrid.aspx?q=913&t=node.js%20p...

http://www.jobdensity.com/QueryGrid.aspx?q=914&t=go%20progra...

nostrademons
What's their keyword hit algorithm? Any two words, or any two words that must be adjacent to each other? Most search engines run on the former, in which case "go programmer" is going to match "We're looking for a programmer who's a go-getter, someone self-motivated and willing to take on extra assignments" and "Go grab the job of your dreams and be a programmer with us" and "You've been the go-to person that other people at your firm look up to."

Best way I can think of to overcome this is search for "golang" [1], but that's going to undercount by a lot. I think really you can't draw any conclusions from free-text search engines.

[1] http://www.jobdensity.com/QueryGrid.aspx?q=913&t=golang

jfaucett
As a js developer, I'd say node of course. But it is true that its backend usage isn't exactly exploding. Personally, I think this has more to do with the types of guarantees (or lack thereof) that node gives you on the backend. I see a lot of rails and jvm language backends for building services these days. You might want to consider familiarizing yourself with the jvm and picking up clojure or scala.

I tested out go for a couple months and found it to be a very interesting language , but I still wouldn't build a rest api with it unless that api was very simple. Its a great language for many things, but I can't imagine a lot of people are using it to build larger mvc service based applications and don't see this happening for the foreseeable future.

siscia
You should not focus on what is in demand right now, but what will be in the next future... You are too late for being a leader in the hottest language of today, but you are just in time to be a great leader of the hottest language of tomorrow...
lollipop25
From where I came from and where I am now, the trend for freelance jobs is always around PHP. :P

As for Node vs Go, I tend to hear more stuff done in Node rather than Go. One perk of learning Node is that it's just JavaScript. You can easily transition from the server-side to the front-end and get another ballpark to play on. Go tends to be more on infrastructure, which usually exist in big companies with large systems which means regular, permanent positions rather than freelance.

You can learn both though. Nothing's stopping you.